"Follow me into the desert
As thirsty as you are
Crack a smile and cut your mouth
And drown in alcohol
'Cause down below the truth is lying
Beneath the riverbed
So quench yourself and drink the water
That flows below her head."
- Burden in my Hands, SoundGarden
T H E F I F T H I N S T A L L M E N T: 'W e l c o m e t o B. O. W'…
A feeble groan escaped Kazooie's lips as she began to awaken in a spinning world of seething agony. Her eyes began to crease open into tiny slits, the young breegull's eyes shimmering faintly through a thin glaze. Some type of clothing rubbed against her skin and enveloped her body in a makeshift cocoon… Kaz struggled and pushed her elbow against it, but it only caused a jolt of stunning pangs that fired from her shoulder blade and along her backbone. Her body shuddered then collapsed in both fatigue and defeat upon the cavern floor.
"Don't move, kid. You'll mess up the loose binding I used to fix up that bullet hole." Banjo's voice, sounding strangely lethargic and sloppy, echoed in her hurting skull. His coat was wild and disheveled and his hollowed eyes were enclosed in the swollen purple rings of a sleepless night. Kaz only stared at him, almost amazed even. The bear gave a numb grunt at her response and returned his hooded gaze to the crackling bonfire. A rusted can of beans sat upon a frying pan over the blaze, propped up by a bundle of twigs with its lid peeled off crudely by a blade. The breegull pressed her uninjured arm to the floor and hoisted her entire upper body into a sitting position. The smell was tempting… but Banjo's appearance made her nervous. He could snap out at her in seconds…
"What's wrong, Kaz? By the way you looked, I figured you were starved." He shuffled a bit, and then poked at the can with the branches of a stick to heat it up a bit quicker. This assured the breegull as she edged a bit closer towards him.
"I am…" Kaz noted as she placed herself down by Banjo's side. The breegull pursed her avian lips as she continued. "No offense, Banjo, but… you look like shit."
The bear furrowed his brow. "Yeah… Feel like it too. Couldn't sleep last night… had a… bad dream." In the orange glow of the fire, a shadow of guilt and sorrow began to form about his face, but it soon disappeared as he shifted his attention to the beans. He grabbed the panhandle and lifted it gingerly, avoiding the extreme heat of the metal as he placed it on the stone floor and warned Kaz like her mother would. "Careful. It could be hot now."
She nodded and nudged her coat around her paw, lifting the meal with the makeshift glove and placing it in her covered lap. Banjo tossed her a plastic spoon coated with dirt and grime from his rucksack, smirking as she clumsily bounced it around in her hands. Kazooie cringed a bit at the sight of the bubbling goop and swirled the lumps floating along the surface. It wasn't as scrumpdiddlyumptious as she planned… but it was food, and she needed something to fill up her gut. She scooped some of the beans up in her spoon and shoved it in her beak. It tasted… pretty good, actually. Well anything would after a diet of garbage and bugs. Kazooie hummed with delight and ravenously began to dig in, not even pausing to breathe. She hasn't eaten anything this good for a while… and she was enjoying the chance. The bear chuckled calmly at the scene.
"Jesus Christ, kid! You're gonna be like an old dog if you eat enough of that crap." Banjo pulled the bag onto his legs, the guns and knives clicking and ringing as they rubbed up against each other. He looked over a hunting rifle, was satisfied with its full ammo, and slid it carefully back inside. Kazooie dropped the spoon in the emptied can with a soft belch and watched him. Her emerald gaze was trapped upon its glinting steel barrel… an idea, more of a wish, raced in her mind.
"Teach me how to use that." she blurted out, really without thinking.
"What?"
"The gun. I want to learn how to shoot… like you do."
"I don't think you'd make it through with that bad shoulder, kid. Besides, a gun ain't a toy. It can make a person's life end in an instant right there…." Banjo lectured to the young breegull as he clenched his beloved Uzi like a trophy. Kazooie felt like a moron for the first time since she met him… Her mind raced for an excuse.
"C'mon… this thing's just a scratch compared to what I used to get. Watch." Kaz shed a somewhat masculine grin and thudded her fist against her injury. Soon she was left cringing with her body hunched around her arm. Banjo pointed with his chin with a look of 'I told you so' upon his face.
"Kid, that thing is no scratch. And believe me, I've probably been through worse." he growled as he massaged a fading blister between his toes. Suddenly his face went blank, staring forward as if realizing something… Only Banjo knew the ways of the gun. How to hold it, load it, and fire it off. But if he passed it on to Kazooie… it would equal twice the fighting power against his enemies.
A crawling smile started to take its form as the straightforward scheme ran through the bear's mind. He craned his neck towards Kaz while humming thoughtfully, catching her off guard as she snapped up her head to stare back to him. "Y'know… when you really think about it… teaching you how to fire won't end up being such a disaster after all."
"You mean…"
"Yep." Banjo unfolded his black trenchcoat and slipped it on. "Get your jacket on and use this." The rifle he had checked ahead of time was tossed indolently into the breegull's arms. It was, to her surprise, quite heavy. She ignored that factor and slung it over her good shoulder with some pride in her stride as she crawled across the ground to pick up her coat. She didn't know where Banjo was going to take her, but the bear figured out the lay of the land much earlier and understood its terrain more than she ever could.
"Just stay close and don't go strayin' off somewhere. Someone could take you on as a target if you do it where we're goin'. It happens."
--
The scorched remnants of decomposing and dying trees suffocated the desert ground beneath them, their skeletal limbs reaching for the heavens as if they were the souls of the departed searching for redemption from this hellish world. Lilac-hued mist wreathed and coiled about their roots as they blanketed the forest earth completely in an ocean of mystery. All about lay the empty cases of bullets, and even guns if you were lucky enough, buried in the sand.
Kaz stooped behind a log, her rifle propped upon the mossy, insect-infested hide as she squinted through the hunting scope. The bear was in her sights and, fortunately, he wasn't the target. In his left paw he tossed the hollowed can of Guff beans idly about in his palm. Banjo smirked as he withdrew his fingers to let it plummet on the face of a cleanly chopped stump, and then sauntered over towards Kazooie with an inflated chest of mock authority. The breegull couldn't help but snicker a bit.
"Alright, kid, it's time for your first shootin' lesson. Do your best and make a lastin' impression on me. I could use the extra help in the Badlands… if it's worth it." The bear crouched behind Kaz, using his powerful body as a cushion against the gun's recoil. He wrapped his muscle-laden arms around her and supported the small wingpaws as she held the rifle.
"First, support yourself. Dig your heels into the sand and stiffen up good. Become one with the desert." Banjo's tone was lowered to a suspenseful whisper, as if they were hunting the most dangerous, bloodthirsty animal alive. And they were: the Minjo soldier. But in this case it was your average tin can. The clicking of rocks could be heard as Kazooie ground her soles into the earth. Banjo continued on with his instructions.
"Good. Now focus on the target and put it in the center of your scope. If the aim's lopsided, then it's a glancing shot and you'd be fucked if this were a real situation. Concentrate kid." The breegull narrowed her peering eye and adjusted her scope lens a little to her liking with her free paw.
"You should be grateful I reloaded this baby up already. Push that switch down with your thumb." She did so. "And pull the damn trigger."
BANG! Kaz's thrilled laughter mingled with the resounding explosion of the gunfire. Like a shockwave the noise thundered across the scrubland and into the rock-strewn horizon far, far ahead of them. Banjo chuckled as the can returned to earth with a monotonous thump, bouncing a few times before resting upon its smashed middle.
"Wut th' fuck? Oi thawt yew said thur wurn't anybody else 'ere bowt us, Scrach!" bellowed a guttural, dim-witted voice from inside the ominous woodlands. Banjo's blood drained from his snout and his heart leapt into his throat… yet he kept a cool outwards impression for the breegull to follow. He wasn't going to let this happen again…. they weren't going to take away what he worked for. Kazooie was the only reason he didn't go insane from sheer loneliness these past weeks. To him… she was a friend. A frustrated growl rumbled from the bear's gritted fangs as he shoved the bird into some bramble to conceal her.
"Shut your mouth and keep real still. I can handle this, you just stay put here until it's over." he murmured hastily before pushing a few branches over her face and body. The hunt had begun.
"Well, whaddya t'ink oi am, a damn radar o' somethin'?" came the shrieking reply of a lavender-hued Minjo as he bumbled through the undergrowth. He used the nose of his .45 to nudge aside bothersome twigs and barbs from his baggy and dirt-splattered pantlegs, grumbling and cursing wickedly under his breath in the process. Scrach was something of a tenderfoot. He wasn't used to the rough terrain and was too lazy to make it any better. Little did he know, through his clumsy mistake, someone was stalking him… noticing his every movement and awaiting for the right moment. Kazooie reeled back as she picked up the stench of the Minjo, a characteristic that surrounded them like an aura. She saw his boots clomping past her bush and listened to his labored breathing as he stood in front of her to rest his aching leg muscles.
"Huh…? Wot's this?" A grubby paw plucked the can from the ground. Scrach's cunning yellow eyes scanned it once over and then he tossed it back with a sneer. "False ala-"
Banjo pounced. In a blur of ebony and glinting metal, he had his victim knocked flat on his back and at his vengeful mercy. Bonfires of pent-up wrath the bear had long since sealed away now kindled in his sapphire eyes and his upper lip twitched with an oncoming snarl. Scrach gurgled as the boot stomped upon his gullet, clawing at the dirt for his weapon. Banjo noticed this and kicked the gun further from his grasp with scorn. The Minjo was forced to stare down the barrel of the Uzi, jowl bobbing and his courage only working up to speak merely three words.
"Th'…. Th' Black Ghost…."
"You got that right, motherfucker." He cocked his gun. "Now put a smile on. I'm doing this world a favor."
"An' wot favah would dat be?" Banjo cringed as the nozzle of a pistol was shoved into the nape of his neck. A Minjo of a sickly green color grinned with the snaggled, rotted teeth of malice up towards the bear and pushed more firmly into his flesh. "Looks loike we gots ouwselves a prisonah, buckies!"
Another pair of Minjoes emerged from the brushwood, blue and yellow, and snickering cruelly as they began to surround and block off any type of escape for Banjo. Even while staring what could be his death in the face, he didn't cower nor tremble in their presence like most did. He just followed them with his cold stare but didn't move his head once. The yellow soldier snatched the Uzi from his clutches, his eyes shimmering with an avaricious glow as he scanned the weapon's magnificent figure. Scrach was punted brutally by his leader a few times before he was dragged to his feet from underneath Banjo's boot for his mistake.
"Lez rake 'is back clean wid me cat-o-nine!"
"Nah… blow owt 'is knees an' make 'im 'obble 'round n' 'round, hukhukuhk!"
All turned their necks stiffly at the sound of a distant gunshot to the western sand hills. Never did the gang take this as a warning. The green leader increased the pressure against the trigger and, as he did, grey matter and bone fragments ricocheted through the air as his head exploded from a mortal bullet. Banjo wiped the disgusting mess from the side of his snout, shoved the corpse away with contempt and hatred for the species and ducked behind the trees, picking up his gun as he fled from the line of fire. The cobalt Minjo's body convulsed as more shells entered his body then slumped to the ground, never to rise again hopefully. His yellow partner turned tail to run, but a well-tossed, sharpened pole through the neck ended any progress. Scrach groveled on the earth on all fours for a second and then bolted off in a blind dash towards the woodlands. Kazooie now sought her chance. Raising her shotgun, she positioned it between the twigs all the while trying to remember what the bear taught her. The lavender Minjo screeched as the shell pierced his calf muscle, but he stumbled on, fueled by primal fear. Kaz poked her beak from the bushes towards Banjo.
A lengthy, high-pitched whistle wavering in tone now replaced the explosions of fired bullets, bouncing among the hollowed trunks of the trees until they met the keen ears of Banjo. Kazooie was utterly confused and looked to the side at the bear for guidance. The look that was upon his face was something she'd never forget. Tears glittered on the rims of his eyelids as he replied with the same whistle, but deeper, and a huge smile engulfed his normally cold features. As if he were truly happy. Banjo swept his paw in long, boisterous waves above his head and he began to laugh cheerfully. Laughing. What sweet noise.
Caravans bounced over the rims of the sand dunes. Creatures of varied species fired off their guns and whooped in celebration, clinging to the passenger doors by a curved bar. A tattered, crimson banner wafted in the breeze with the letters 'B' 'O'' and 'W' in bold ebony type. The memories flooded into the bear's memory bank as he jogged towards the approaching jeeps, still chuckling. This was his home. He saw friends he hadn't seen in months, even years, smiling through the windshield with teardrops trickling down their faces.
"Banjo! Welcome back, man! We missed ya."